Basu: Akin controversy shows how many in GOP think

Aug. 23, 2012

Until this week, Rep. Todd Akin was virtually unknown beyond his district, associated more with his deep religious convictions than any legislative achievements. Long before his comments about women's bodies and 'legitimate rape,' he was a favorite among home-schooling and conservative church groups. / Associated Press file photo

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If the Republican Party had a “problem” with women before Todd Akin, it has a catastrophe with them now. But it’s not one that party leaders can make disappear simply by distancing themselves from one congressman’s particularly bizarre way of expressing a core position that the majority of them seem to share.

That position: That women are not smart enough or moral enough to decide for themselves under what circumstances to have a baby.

Some of those men would allow women to get abortions — a right the U.S. Supreme Court already has declared we have, unequivocally — only if we were raped. But since we might be prone to lie or exaggerate about that, they must ensure it was, as Akin fumblingly put it, a “legitimate” rape. That’s as distinguished from the kinds they don’t consider as serious or, say, blameless on the victim’s part — maybe date rape, statutory rape, rape committed when the victim is incapacitated by substances or the rape of a daughter by her father.

Akin actually did women a favor. He exposed how endemic and widespread are the cluelessness and/or callousness of the current Republican majority in Congress who want to make policies governing women’s lives.

Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, can feign outrage over what Akin said and try to distance themselves from it. But aside from his choice of the word “legitimate,” neither of them is far off from him in outlook.

Romney opposes abortion in all cases except rape, incest and to save a mother’s life. Dr. John C. Willke, the source of Akin’s belief that rape can’t get you pregnant, was described in Romney’s 2008 presidential race as “a very important surrogate for Governor Romney’s pro-life and pro-family agenda.” Willke continues to maintain his stance and support Akin.

If Romney identified with Willke’s views then, what has changed now, other than Akin’s bad press?

As for Ryan, he co-sponsored with Akin and about 173 House members, the vast majority of them Republican (and Rep. Steve King among them), a bill to ban federal funding for abortion in all cases except incest and so-called “forcible” rape. The word choice suggests he shared Akin’s belief that some forms of rape are less legitimate than others. Yet Ryan this week pressed Akin to get out of his Senate race, because of how his words might affect Republicans’ chances for election.

The word “forcible” was later dropped because of the outrage it generated. Some people have learned to cloak their views in more palatable, e.g. “pro-family,” language. But then the truth slips out, exposing how they really view women and our quest for self-determination.

It may be a loud-mouth ideologue on the radio, or a soft-spoken member of Congress who has never completely figured out how pregnancy happens. It might be from the Republican Party of the United States, whose new platform condemns abortion under any circumstance, rape or no rape, even if a woman could die from childbirth.

If we want insurance to cover birth control, we must be sluts. If we want to abort a fetus conceived from a sexual assault, we must be lying about what kind of rape it was. If we think the federal government should support battered women, we are hostile toward men. All of these things have been said by prominent GOP men. The latter was said by King in 2005 when he tried to block reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, claiming it interfered “in the relationship of marriage.”

Sometimes they’ll literally shut women out of the conversation, as an all-male Republican House panel did when it discussed a mandate for birth control coverage by religious-affiliated institutions, and Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke asked to be heard.

Here in Iowa, 41 Republican members of the House of Representatives recently tried to get the Department of Human Services to pass an emergency rule to prevent Medicaid from paying for abortions even where rape, incest or fetal abnormality were involved. To his credit, Chuck Palmer, the Republican governor’s director of human services, wouldn’t allow that, pointing out that federal Medicaid funding requires payments for abortions in rape or incest cases.

We have been lectured by Rick Santorum on the “dangers” of contraception, while King suggested states had the right to ban birth control entirely, even for married couples. If only, just once, some of those men could experience the dangers of unprotected sex and unplanned pregnancy. Maybe then they would stop trying to minimize assaults on women by splitting hairs over what’s really rape. Maybe then they’d shed the degrading belief that how we choose to protect or prepare ourselves should be their decision, and not ours.

Of course, not all Republicans think that way. But those who support those positions tend to vote Republican. No wonder the party is working so hard to change the conversation and get Akin out of the spotlight. He’s letting the cat out of the bag.